A good couple days with progress on the house and other cool things.
On the house, we got the piers to brace up the house done and the holes in the floor covered back up. Now we are working on putting styrofoam insulation around the outside of the foundation of the house. I guess it is to keep the wind from blowing up and in. After the insulation, we are putting on something they call hearty board, which looks to me like some kind of cement board. Putting it around the outside of the house isn't a big deal. But where the porches are, they want us to go under the porches and install it there. The success prediction for this project is a little dubious. When Bob and Howard are both skeptical, it pays to pay attention. But that is what we have been told to do and have clarified that we understand correctly. So we will give it a shot. Might end up being easier than we thought.
Tonight we went to one of the home owners we worked for last year. It was a house that Howard and Lewis and Ron and Dale and I (Rod Sc.) worked on. When we were there, we started from the foundation and laid the plate, the floor joists, the floor, framed up and covered the exterior walls and framed up the interior walls. We made the skeleton of the house. Tonight we went in and saw it completed. It was a little surreal. The house is done and furnished very nicely and they have put their unique touches on it. You can see a few pictures of it. on our FB page or our Picasa page- links below. They they told us the story of how they weathered Hurricane Sandy and the ripple effects their actions had in saving three other lives. It was inspirational. I have a typed copy and will try to post it once I get back to MN and can scan it in.
OH! And they bought us a Smith Island Cake. Google it if you don't know what it is. It was delicious!
ANDDD- a local guy donated a big box of blue crabs for us for dinner. They are pretty work intensive, so some people had an alternative, but I thought they were pretty good. It was a good cultural experience.
There are so many nice people in this town. The locksmith that came and opened the van when Debbie had the keys in her pocket for hours and the rest of us couldn't find them. He refused to take any money. And then the plumber who gave us a big box of crabs for our supper. And the homeowner who gave us Smith Island Cake and let us gawk at her house. (she was actually happy to share it with us. They are proud of it and grateful.- And I like they way they said, "Come Aboard!" when they were inviting us in.)
Last work day is tomorrow. We will work about a half day and get as much done as we can. Ben and Gordy (from UMCOR, the agency we are working through) both said to just do what we can and that they have 60 volunteers coming next week. So we will do what we can.
That's all you can do, right?
The homeowner we worked for last year that invited us over tonight said something I thought was a good image. She said, "When you go through the water, you leave a wake. We don't always look back to see how those ripples affect things, but you know they do." Be the Boat. Be the Ripples. Be the Wake. Be the Tool.
R
(OH yeah- links: Click here for the Picasa site
Click here for our Facebook page )
--
Are you a tool?
Christ has no body on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out;
yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.
(St. Teresa of Avila)
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